Progressives at Tier 1 research universities and top liberal arts colleges sit at the summit of the higher ed hierarchy, where their eminence rests upon high standards of academic work. But they are fervently committed to hiring and retaining more persons of color. They have attempted affirmative action of the official and unofficial kind for a […]
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According to the conservative Dartmouth Review, a crowd of “Black Lives Matter” protesters surged into a campus library November 12, shouting obscenities at whites (“Fuck your white privilege!” “You filthy white piece of shit!”), pushing and shoving as well. The Dartmouth, a non-conservative paper, buried its report of the library incursion at the end of […]
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Crossing the snow-covered Dartmouth green one night, I stopped, looked around, and asked, “Who owns this place, and by what right?” More than half a century later, I have still not resolved a complete answer to that question. But I can give you my short-form response: A small group of willful people, mostly money men […]
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(reprinted from Joe Asch’s Dartblog) While the College takes pride in extending generous financial aid to 57.4% of the student body, the other 42.6% pays full whack. That’s an amazing thing when you think about it. The average American family income is $49,445, yet a great many Dartmouth families can pull together $62,125 (according to […]
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The war on fraternities is one of the longest-running conflicts on campus, and the most active front in that war is the current media campaign against hazing, triggered by the lurid charges of former Dartmouth student Andrew Lohse. In an op-ed in his college newspaper, The Dartmouth, and later in a long Rolling Stone article, […]
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Richard Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation is well known for his relentless, articulate, well-researched arguments that affirmative action should be based on class, not race. My reaction to these arguments is usually rather tepid. I find Kahlenberg’s arguments compelling only insofar as he also criticizes race-based preferences, and his criticism of them usually doesn’t go very […]
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It’s a constant skirmish between donors seeking to fund specific scholarly projects at universities and the universities’ administrators, who would typically like to see as much of that money as possible go to “unrestricted” uses–that is, whatever the administrators, not the donors, deem the best use of the funds. And nowadays, with universities’ endowment values falling during the […]
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“Inside Higher Ed” reports that Dartmouth College, facing a $100 million budget gap, is taking more funds from endowed chairs and endowed programs to help pay for administrative costs, alarming faculty, some of whom think the move is unethical. Here is a first reaction to this news: we still think faculty run our institutions, but […]
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I once asked a pilot friend if he didn’t tire of the lumbering, leviathan commercial airliner he flew. He surprised me by saying that a 747 can handle like a Lamborghini if ever it needed to. A bit of that seems to be underway in Hanover, New Hampshire, where the new president of Dartmouth College, […]
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At the Volokh Conspiracy, Todd Zywicki outlines the latest in the Dartmouth alumni suit against Dartmouth College. The current case, like the previous case, arises from the 1891 Agreement between the Dartmouth Trustees and the alumni of the College, acting through the Association of Alumni, that gave the alumni the right to elect half of […]
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This morning Todd Zywicki briefly noted at the Volokh Conspiracy, that he had been denied a second term on the Dartmouth Board of Trustees. It’s difficult not to conclude that Dartmouth is pruning board dissenters. Zywicki’s personal statement about the decision on his website provides a history of the source of his removal: ..From 1891 […]
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A new issue of the Dartmouth Review is up. Also, check out video of the first panel of this month’s National Association of Scholars conference.
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– After being offered and then denied an honorary degree by Northwestern University, Jeremiah Wright returned to speak at that institution on Friday, in a speech closed to media. The Daily Northwestern was there, and, while Wright’s remarks don’t seem to be particularly interesting, the opinions of students present clearly were. One attendee, echoing opinion […]
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Given their common characteristics it’s often difficult for a person of even superior discernment to tell, from a slight distance, the difference between an accomplished university bureaucrat and a robust brick wall. Both seem witlessly to beg for the wrecking ball. The nation’s nine colonial colleges—not to mention the hundreds founded since—are thronged with administrative […]
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Priya Venkatesan will go down in history as the Dartmouth professor who decided to sue her students because they gave her lousy course evaluations. A few days later Venkatesan, who was hired by Dartmouth in 2005 to teach four sections of Writing 5, the semester-long standard freshman-composition class, told reporters she was withdrawing her planned […]
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Another vital chance to opine on the Dartmouth trustee-packing scheme has arisen. The Dartmouth Association of Alumni is now holding elections for their Executive Committee. The contest revolves centrally around the Alumni Association’s ongoing suit against Dartmouth’s alteration of the college’s board. Two slates of candidates are competing: one, Dartmouth Undying, which vows to end […]
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(This article originally appeared at Inside Higher Ed) Dartmouth College is now the latest institution to announce considerable changes to its tuition and financial aid structure, eliminating any charges for students from families making less than $75,000 a year. Dartmouth’s arrangement is not nearly so generous as Harvard’s or Yale’s, yet it’s markedly superior in […]
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Dartmouth trustee Todd Zywicki made several clumsy remarks in an otherwise good speech about campus orthodoxy. Speaking at a conference at the John William Pope Center, Zywicki compared faculty pressure to oust Harvard president Lawrence Summers to the Spanish Inquisition, called former Dartmouth president James Freedman a “truly evil man,” and said those who control […]
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Anyone looking for a prime example of official huckster-speak should take another look at Dartmouth’s press release concerning the board restructuring. It makes the college’s reduction of alumni voting rights sound like, well, a warm bath. First there’s a lot of mush about Darmouth’s unusually small board, which Dartmouth’s governance committee found was putting “the […]
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What do news outlets have to say about the Dartmouth Trustee fracas? Dartmouth News “Dartmouth Trustees Vote to Strengthen College’s Governance” New York Times “Dartmouth Expands Board, Reducing Role of Alumni” New York Sun “Dartmouth Guts Power of Competitively Elected Trustees” Let me just suggest that one of these is less accurate than the others; […]
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http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2007/05/sign_this_petition_please_joe.html#more
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Press Release: Dartmouth College Office of Public Affairs Dartmouth Board of Trustees Elects Stephen Smith HANOVER, N.H. – The Dartmouth College Board of Trustees has elected Stephen F. Smith as a trustee following a nomination vote by Dartmouth’s alumni from a slate of four candidates. Smith, a 1988 graduate of Dartmouth, will join the board […]
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